Budget: Cambodia

This is one of our Budget series of posts to give you an idea of how much we spent traveling around the world. Here we will look at Cambodia. Check our posts to see what kind of activities we did and where we stayed!

In Cambodia we used the US dollar. Yup, that’s right. Cambodia uses US dollars. They do not use US coins though, so we were also dealing with Cambodian Riel for costs less than one dollar. The going exchange rate at the time of our visit was 4000 Riel to 1 dollar.

Did you catch it?? Yes, that is a 2 dollar bill. They are in circulation in Cambodia!

Total (for 12 days): $1092.28

Accommodation: $303.60

We splurged on an expensive place that our friend suggested for two nights, then stayed in hostels and guesthouses for the rest of the time. We always had private rooms.

Activities: $223.50

This included entrance fees to a number of things: museums, the killing fields, Angkor Wat, and more. It also included a few tuk tuk drivers/guides. In addition, we went to the circus in Battambang which was fairly pricey.

Alcohol: $11

Our alcohol category does not include alcohol that we buy with food, so this includes a few happy hours with a friend in Phnom Penh, a wine tasting, and some beers while watching a movie.

Food: $303.93

We ate out one to two times per day and we had to purchase our own breakfast for most of the time (though not all).

Miscellaneous: $29.75

This included postcards, mailing postcards, laundry, a scarf souvenir, and a donation (which Eric thinks was actually a scam).

Transportation: $156.50

This includes a few taxis and tuk tuks as well as bus transport between cities. It also includes rental ebikes and bikes in Angkor.

Visas: $64

Our visas on arrival were $30 each and we had to pay an extra $2 each because we forgot to put our passport photos in our day bags and so had to buy new ones. Oops.

This divides out to $91.02/day which is under our $100/day budget… though not nearly as low as we had hoped. We were so surprised that Cambodia has ended up being one of our most expensive countries thus far. We did a little calculating and realized that we ended up spending much more on food than we ever imagined we would. We didn’t eat street food nearly enough, partly because it is so hot so we always looked for restaurants to get out of the heat. Activities were also high which was in part because of the high cost of visiting Angkor temples. Wow, we have to do better!